The Miller Center is a nonpartisan affiliate of the University of Virginia that specializes in presidential scholarship, public policy and political history and strives to apply the lessons of history to the nation’s most pressing contemporary governance challenges. more →

Welcome to the Miller Center

From presidents Carter, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush.

Hoff: Immigration Is Not a Solution to Declining Birthrate

Derek S. Hoff, a former Miller Center National Fellow, an associate professor of history at Kansas State University and the author of The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in U.S. History, has published an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times countering arguments from across the political spectrum that the United States needs immigration to make up for its declining birthrate. Unlike other wealthy nations that will see their populations stabilize or decline, the United States is actually projected to grow. According to Hoff:

Conservatives and liberals alike generally assume that population growth drives economic growth. But until the triumph of the new laissez-faire economics in the 1970s and 1980s, most economists agreed that what mattered was not the size of a population but its human capital and its savings, investment and consumption practices. Indeed, many mainstream economists argued that a smaller but more productive population would enhance growth and lead to a more just society. It is strange that we talk on one hand about an innovation- and knowledge-based economy while still thinking about economic growth in terms of sheer body count. Moderate levels of immigration can help us maintain a highly skilled work force, but so, too, can investing more in educating our young.

Hoff concludes:

Shoring up the welfare state on the backs of immigrants, including guest workers, is neither rational nor just. There are many reasons to re-examine America’s immigration policies. But cynical calls for expanding our population at any cost should play no role in the debate.